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Modern Retro computing
Sebby writes "This is pretty neat - the folks over at retrosystem rebuild old computers/consoles with new guts inside. They have Amiga 1000, Atari 2600, and also NES systems, with lots of options for configuration. If they only made a Sinclair ZX81 with the same specs, I'd be sold!" I mean, who wouldn't want a PC in an
NES box ;)
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
"We are patenting this process of customizing old computer and game console cabinets to be Windows, Linux or other contemporary operating systems based on x86 systems. Contact us if you are interested in licensing from us."
Is it just me, or does anyone else find this a bit disturbing?
I think the NES/Atari Boxes look great, but I'm curious as to how well they do airflow-wise with a 800Mhz processor inside??
I seem to recall my those systems could get a little warm just playing their cartridges.
Cool idea, though.
There may be a difficulty finding boards that small that support a P4. There's also serious heat issues - generally, the slower the chip, the less heat is radiated. Price is probably a factor (most of this computer's reason to be is to look cool, not to be a speed demon). Heck, I don't even know if a P4 heatsink and fan would fit in that A1000 case.
Writers imply. Readers infer.
I totally agree. There are some situations when it is acceptable. If you come across a chassis that has been completely stripped of all its original hardware (or enough that there is no hope of ever getting it working in its original form), I guess shoehorning PC parts into it is a better fate than letting it be thrown away. But the thought that someone would take a working original Amiga, or next cube, or other funky old system, and knowingly replace the original hardware with commodity PC junk, makes me shudder.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Addendum: there is nothing wrong with taking an older commodity PC and modifying it to run newer hardware. I have a couple of very solidly built full-AT desktop cases that I can't wait to put to use with newer guts (perhaps after some modifications, or finding decent AT mainboards). There is no historical loss in discarding the original 286 or whatever was in it before, that stuff is still very widely available and basically worthless.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Yes, I know we always talk about trying to get linux to run on an older computer, but gutting the case and replacing the innards is cheating. :)
As far as appeal goes, consider you're intentionally purchasing a machine with limited upgrade options. In order to minimize the footprint, the boards won't have many PCI slots, and its debatable if they could be used anyway in that case. While old computer cases can probably be picked up for free, or very very cheap, there's still the labor cost of adapting them to fit modern components. That's going to jack the price a bit, not to mention a power supply will still be required, which is typically a good percentage of the case cost.
Of course, people buying one of these are probably doing it for the novelty purposes and not because they're concerned about cost or usability.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Thaat's a great way to celebrate maybe the single greatest personal computer ever designed (top 3, at the very least). Give it a piece of shit celeron, the shittiest cpu ever, made by the shittiest cpu manufacturer ever. Way to pay homage to the 68k, a paragon of simplicity and power. What better way to honor the first color GUI, a gui that fit on a single 880k floppy, than to put the cruddiest OS ever invented? They did put windows on it, right? It's some kind of sarcastic performance art, and the only thing that could contrast beautiful Workbench would be XP, which is lean if it installs in what, less than 300 megs?
Now, I'm hardly a purist. Things don't have to have original condition. I'm fine with PPC's in a1000's, linux on amigas, someone doing a messy hack that gives it more ram. If you want to see a real A1000 hack, ask for pictures of the FrankenThousand on comp.sys.amiga.hardware. But don't pull this shit. This isn't retro-computing, it's vivisectiony at its most sociopathic.
Go ahead, mod me down. Claim I don't know what I'm talking about. But don't come begging when you want to buy a 20mhz overclocking kit for your sinclair 1000.
They only have inside pictures for the Amiga case. Well duh, big deal there are plenty of low profile commercial cases already out there. Nothing interesting to see there.
I was really disapointed that there were no photo galleries for the Atari and NES cases. I mean for all we know those are just mockups and there are no pc parts inside.
You also got to be kidding me with those systems specs. What brand of cpu is it? What speed is the Hard drive? What kind of Ram is that? What video card is in there and how much ram does it have? What type of warranty does it have?
There is no way I would drop $1,200 with so little info, especially via Paypal.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
So what exactly is nostalgic about a modern PC in the case of something you are nostalgic about? Did you once do that in the past?
Nostalgia is playing KC Munchkin on my Magnavox Odyssey 2, not ripping out its guts and shoving in the contents of my laptop. That just does both of them a disservice.